I've always wondered how someone who believes in a God could defy him? The best example I can think of is premarital sex, people do it constantly, and they are not the least bit sorry. Granted, i'm happy religious people don't act this way, I just don't understand how they could disobey God. If I thought he was the least bit real I would be on my hands and knees praying all day.

The thing is, you can't divide the world into those who believe in God and those who don't. Your blurb makes it seem as if you believe that all religious people have an unyielding belief in a deity. I can see why you might think this: why else would anyone be crazy enough to blindly follow a religion and do all the crazy things associated with it?

The reality is, most people, including self-proclaimed atheists and theists, are somewhere in a spectrum of "how much" or "how" they believe in God. Religious people have doubts too. The whole basis of religion is faith. You have to believe something first, then you are promised a witness of its truth and blessings for your belief. You can never fully shake the doubt, but outward manifestations of belief serve to cement in one's faith.

There is another aspect where a lot of people who claim to be religious just keep up the act in order to gain acceptance from those in their religious group. Or, perhaps, they spend their whole lives relying on the belief of someone they respect, perhaps a parent on pastor. It all sounds fine and dandy when someone else is talking about it, but it is hard to apply in real life when nobody is there to tell you otherwise.

Also keep in mind that someones degree of faith in a deity is constantly in a state of flux as they go throughout their lives. Thus, you can't really say that that those religious people who sin are defying God, as they never really fully "knew" God. Presumably, one with a perfect knowledge of God could never defy him. If they did, they would truly be "evil." This is why Judas is considered the greatest sinner in Christian theologies. He knew Jesus and saw his miracles, but still betrayed Jesus.

That said, religious people "sin" for the same reason anyone does anything which goes against their personal values. It is all about justification for your actions. When someone does something that is contrary to their core ethics or values, they deal with the cognitive dissonance by making up excuses which ease the tension. In the case of pre-marital sex, for many they think it is "ok" because they "love" the person. Other times, it is a case of "I can repent later," or "I'm righteous in every other category," "I'm doing this to make him/her happy" or "just once is ok." This is human nature, and non-religious people do it all the time. Why do people cheat, put others down, lie, steal, etc. and feel ok about it? It is all about justifying our own actions so we feel ok with it. A phenomenon which surfaces a lot is when a religious person sins, but actually appears to become more outwardly "holy" in the process. Think of Reverend Dimmesdale in the Scarlet Letter. Or nowadays, a closeted priest who acts out his desires with children. In the end, though, "sinning" or doing something wrong is about when self-interest overtakes the the interest for something larger, be it a deity, a significant other, a society, or a community.

In the case of religious people, sinning actually has the potential to strengthen faith. For someone who has been taught their whole life what is "right" and what is "wrong," the cognitive dissonance becomes too much and the justifications are no longer good enough and they seek resolution. This is repentance or "Atonement" in Christianity. Atonement literally means "at-one-ment." (This is one of the only theological words of English origin). You are becoming one again with yourself by "washing away" the sin which caused your brain to feel distressed. The effect is that religious people feel more at peace when they follow their religion.

Of course, some are able to break out of this cycle, but for many, especially those raised in a religion, it is impossible to be happy without the religion which acts to keep their mind "at one." However, the human propensity to "sin" or blow off society in favor of self-interest is a principle basis for why religions developed in the first place. However, there is also a reason why a process for making sin right appears in religion: everyone sins.

That's a good point, but I think it varies depending on the religion. Judas was never really demonized in the theology I'm most familiar with. Instead, though he was misguided and he did sin, he was part of the "the plan." After all, someone had to betray Jesus in order for Jesus to die for mankind.

In my original post, though, I was thinking about The Inferno, where only Satan occupies a more horrendous position in Hell. However, I suppose The Inferno portrays a bit of a harsher brand of Christianity than mainstream Christianity nowadays.

Oh, I'm not familiar with Inferno, but I think the opinion differs between people who believe in predestination and free will. I think Judas gets cut more slack in predetermination theology since he was destined to betray Jesus.

Because Satan! No, seriously. I was raised non-denominational Christian, my dad went to college in Louisiana to be a pastor and we were always very involved with a friend of his Church that went to college with him. If I remember correctly (and it's been awhile since I've been to Church) Satan is constantly tempting you to Sin. The fact that we are mere mortals and of the flesh (which is sinful by nature) causes us to be unable to resist the temptation to Sin. It's always an uphill battle through prayer and meditation on God's Word we/you are better prepared to resist Satans temptation but even the most saintly and devout Christians fall prey to Satan's temptation.

So, blame someone else cause it's not really your fault but feel guilty all the same that you screwed up and strive to do better. Is what I gather from it. Dunno though, like I says, it's been awhile.

In a broader sense, the question doesn't need to be centered on Christianity, but it is a very good example. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc., all "break the rules", as do atheists. For the most part, unless one lacks empathy, human beings know (at least basically) what is right/good and wrong/bad, or at very least through religious study or basic knowledge of the law we know what we should and shouldn't do.

But we're also frail and susceptible to greed, selfishness, fear, jealousy, and on and on and on. Some might argue that religion exists to help us understand and cope with our frailty.

I could go on and on about this (it's an interesting question!) but I have work to do!

First, what is sin? Are we talking from a Greco-Roman framework in which the universe is divided into an absolute good and an absolute evil, and sin is to attribute with absolute evil? Or are we talking about a Abrahamic Near Eastern framework in which good and evil aren't cosmic forces in opposition, but tangible things like gain and loss, flourishing and destruction, pleasure and suffering, all of which is in control of one supreme maker, Yhwh God..?

From the Greco-Roman framework sin is basically the human tendency to prefer the negative force and to side with the bad guys for a whole plethora of reasons. Most of the time it is assumed that people are to be taken for granted as evil, and those who side with the good are the exception, and are often locked in a lifelong struggle against themselves to choose good.

From the Abrahamic framework there is no cosmic war, and right and wrong boils down to doing things skillfully or unskillfully, wisely or foolishly, which is why the Hebrew scriptures denounce foolishness far, far more than evil. It's like a person making a table: There's the right (good) way to do it, and the wrong (evil) way to do it. The terms are interchangeable, which is why to "sin" means to "miss the mark" or to wander off the path, to misstep, or to go in a direction that one doesn't necessarily want to go but mistakenly does--often due to poor judgment and misplaced trust into one's own intuition and reasoning rather than the wise instructions given by Yhwh God.

So why do people sin? In the West, usually because they're all intrinsically very evil and malignant and must spend their lives in a losing struggle against a cosmic negative force. In the East, because people are ignorant and accident prone, tend to be overconfident and distrusting and will scrap wise instruction for blind improvisation, leading to net loss, which is the East's functional "evil" and leads to every manner of bad thing over the long haul.

I don't know about the idea of people being considered intrinsically evil in the way you put it. One of the Latin "Fathers of the Church", Augustine of Hippo, said there is no evil, only* lesser degrees of good, where the divine is the ultimate good, perfection and anything else is just a "lack of". So in this case sinning would be choosing the lesser good, not furthering you in your path to divine perfection, but getting you off track.

Religious people sin because they are constantly reminded of sin by their religion. Religions exert greater control over their adherents through a manufactured guilt cycle. Religious adherents are taught how to sin, and then convinced that the only way to escape sin is through their religion -- the very religion that has encouraged them through reverse psychology to sin. Sin is the business of religions and they have developed in every possible way to facilitate, control, and exploit sin.

Because religion, much like ideologies, project a simplified world and how people should fit their mold in it. People, however, are human, and human are far more complex than their idealized shape. Their interaction even more so, not to even start with their subconscious. This is why attempts of implementing ideal states are doomed to fail, just as religious dogmas.

Think of it as belief in belief. They don't actually believe that their god exists, they believe that it's a good idea to believe that god exists, this makes it very easy to bend and flex the letter of the law when it comes to their holy texts to mean just about anything they need it to mean to allow them to do what they would do anyway.

If they truly truly thought with absolute certainty that their current action was going to land them in a lake of fire for all eternity they would not do it. Imagine walking up to a police officer and trying to grab his gun, in most countries this is an extremely bad idea and the vast overwhelming majority of the population would not even come close to this action for fear of the consequences to their life. Burning in an eternal lake of fire is slightly worse than the consequences for grabbing a police officers firearm, if people really thought that a lake like that existed and their actions would send them there they would not be doing anything their holy text said would land them in it.